As pointed out in the application of Briggs et al, U.S. Ser. No. 07/549,789 filed July 9, 1990, it is standard practice with respect to mating connectors to provide means which position the connector halves so that the terminals therein are aligned for a proper mating engagement. It is common to provide pins, posts, and projections in one half made to fit within complementary apertures in the other half; both integrally molded with respect to the housings of the connector halves, or added as hardware. One problem associated with interconnecting of connector halves arises when the halves are of different suppliers and are not complementary. In such instances it is necessary to provide an adapter that alters one or both of the connector halves so as to permit interconnection.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an alignment assembly that permits interconnection between connector halves of a variety of types without requiring the providing of an adapter for each such interconnection. It is further an object to provide a guide means facilitating mounting of a connector half on a mounting structure such as a printed circuit board in a simple and novel manner, and for intermating electrical and optical connectors to join cables to circuit boards. It is particularly an object of the present invention to provide an improved connection between a board mounted transmitter and/or receiver and a shrouded plug connector, as for example, a connection between a Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) and a connector of the Fixed Shroud Duplex (FSD) type.